Dead Bird
A dead bird heralded your arrival on my doorstep; it was time to meet you.
A small dead creature lay in my path, an obstacle of doom between us and now we are at the end of this long road.
My eyes follow the path we took rather, the path you dragged me through and I say to myself, if only. If only
I had listened to the portent, the dead bird, I would still be free.
A woman unmaking a bad choice with the dawn of realization setting in that it was wrong, I was right.
Your half-truths and bullying took no time at all before I was reduced in my own eyes. I let in a demon
that has infected the light of my life and soiled every hope there ever beat in my small chest. He is
a minion who in one fell swoop undid all my decades of fighting and clawing for a morsel of happiness
and freedom. From my fathers tyranny to my husbands is there any way to fight this awful destiny of mine,
but wait, fighting my destiny is what landed me in this place so I will let go. I will stop fighting.
He is a drowning man, clinging to me for desperate life, pulling me into the undertow with him, the harder I
struggle the stronger his vice tightens around my throat and so now I let my muscles relax and decide to stop
fighting you, your ugliness and the pull of this water. Let the water baptize me and cleanse me of my futile
thrashing, let the waves move me to the grassy spot, to keep resisting is killing me. What a stupid little
boy you are.
A little boy tyrant with endless tantrums and clawing; stupid little boy playing your stupid little games,
you demand so much in your fits of emptiness. How do the rules play out in your mind? I wonder if a mirror
has ever passed your vision or is that what you’re struggling to see in the raging water, a reflection of
who you are. I am suspicious the reflection is you but, you rage against the picture it paints and the story
it tells because that is not who you are. You make more demands. You refuse to see and prefer the belly of
your secrets. You are a nice guy.
I am an emotional cripple, you said to me. Extremely alarmed, it sent me running but you cast your line and
danced a new tune and called your agent to demand a new part be granted, and your crooked singing reeled me
back in. Now you are a good man with a big heart but, that is not what the water reflects. There is so much
darkness in the depth of this, the bottom of you and it’s so very dank and ugly, how can you not smell it?
Please don’t leave me you beg.
Need, insecurity, mistaken for love and sensitive in nature; what a puff of smoke you bob and weave behind.
A life of lies, a lifetime of bending women but not breaking them so as to keep defining yourself as a victim,
merely a little boy with a kind heart not a distorted, twisted, ruined monster. The truth is you’re an enemy
without fail. Nothing is created the first time around, nothing will be birthed the second time around either;
you are hollow and carry a void in your’ testes.
Fear has made your’ manhood soft and you wrap a pretty story around it and try so very hard to convince us
both that you are ready, that you want life but, your flaccid being gives you away. Too soft, too weak, too
small to offer you a place to hide, a refuge from your lies and deceptions, you are out in the open now and
soon you will scurry back to the dark corners to begin anew. All alone in your world, you spiral out of
control and the bottom will never come, the word despicable comes to mind.
The dead bird is buried; weep not for the loss of this flying thing for after death comes something new.
Email: Rola Phoenicia
Return to Table of Contents